A respite from noise might seem thin on paper, but spend a few hours on an inescapable airplane with crying babies, heaving green-faced passengers or even a chatty cathy neighbor and get back to us on what you're willing to pay for a little peace and music. What's more, NC options have some of the best sound profiles available, making them true gems for audiophiles and the easily distracted alike. Considering the vastly small market for noise-canceling headsets available at the moment, the problem isn’t necessarily narrowing down the field -- it’s choosing the best one for your audio needs. From pioneering audio staples to buzzing newcomers, these are the noise cancelers worth turning your ears to.

The Story Of New York’s Sidewalk Clock In lower Manhattan there is a simple clock with a not so simple story. It has been living in the sidewalk ticking for over a century. Steven J. Pulvirent sweepingly reports its story in this long-form piece. hodinkee.com Beat By Dre: The Exclusive Story of How Monster Lost...

Music and snow sports go together like Rick Ross and cheese covered honeybuns, but squeezing your favorite cans inside a helmet is rarely a formula for comfort. The POC Receptor BUG Communication Helmet (~$330) skirts this dilemma by integrating Beats by Dr. Dre headphones into the helmet neck roll, which combines bass-heavy tunes with a...

It’s hard to believe that only three years have passed since Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine launched a line of headphones designed to bring their studio sound to the masses. History now shows the move was a prescient business decision that spawned a title wave of copy-cat products endorsed by anyone with a hip-hop single....

Now that Samsung and Motorola have shown their Android super phone hands for the holiday season, it was only a matter of time before HTC followed suit. After signing a $300 million deal to buy 51% of Beats Electronics back in August, HTC’s first Sense-skinned Gingerbread 2.3 phone with Beats audio is now here. Besides...